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I am, apart from being a blogger and a twitterer a facebooker. I don’t use it as much for professional information and development as I do Twitter. I have though managed to follow some excellent people on Facebook and get some great links.
One of the people I follow is Dan Levitin whose Wikipedia entry starts in the following way…

Professor Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D. (born December 27, 1957, San Francisco) is an American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, record producer, musician, and writer.[1] He is currently James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with additional appointments in Music Theory, Computer Science, and Education

As you can see a polymath and someone who has a great knowledge of music and its effects on our brain and nervous system. He is also an accomplished musician himself and friend of many famous musicians from all over the planet.

I got to know about him from a facebook friend who had “friended” him and that has led to me receiving regular updates about his books, his performances, his studies and most importantly his taste in music.

As a true lover of music he has a wide range of interests. every now and again I will click on a link that he gives and this will lead me to a piece of classical music, an avant-garde piece of experimental music or African music.

Today I received the following piece of information in Facebook:
Daniel Levitin 51 years ago today Miles Davis held the first of two recording sessions that became the album “Kind of Blue.” http://ow.ly/1domb

Well I followed the link as I had read a little bit about this famous jazz album and found the video that you can see below:

51 years ago yesterday (as I write this) (2nd,March,1959) Miles Davis walked into a recording studio in New York City for the first of two days of recording that would become the album “Kind of Blue”. The musicians were all brilliant individuals in their own right and included the great John Coltrane who has, like Miles, become something of a jazz legend himself.

There was never any intention that this was anything other than sessions by a talented group of musicians, but what they did was produce a real classic of not just jazz but, as someone says in the film, of music.

I am grateful, as usual for Dan Levetin for bringing this video to my attention. I think it is a useful video for students of today who are looking at the history of music or for the generation that has not heard this music to see if it still has validity in their life. (I am aware of course that this also raises again the problem of access of Youtbe Videos for students in schools and colleges)

My own experience is that great music is timeless and the more I have listened to some of the tracks from this album, the more I believe that “Kind of Blue” deserves its cult status as a real classic album. What’s your opinion?